Threnos

Threnos - meaning Summary

Loss Rendered in Repetition

Pound's short threnody enumerates pleasures and intimacies—winds, desire, touch, speech, knowledge—and repeatedly announces their absence. The recurring refrain Lo the fair dead! turns the catalogue into a litany of mourning and finality. The speaker moves from personal ache to resigned acceptance, insisting that familiar comforts and communal meeting-places are gone. The poem registers bereavement as a series of small losses that accumulate into irrevocable emptiness.